Strategic Renewal, Unlearning, and Forgetting: Understanding Post-Campaign Organisational Knowledge Loss in the British Army After Afghanistan and Northern Ireland

During the British Army’s recent counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, observers noted a recurring problem: the need to relearn lessons from past campaigns. This suggests a loss of institutional knowledge through unintended forgetting or deliberate unlearning. While in-campaign knowledge loss has been explored previously, the decline of knowledge institutionalisation initiatives post- campaign, and its potential to cause relearning in future conflicts, remains under- explored. Additionally, military innovation studies tend to emphasise knowledge accumulation, neglecting the critical role of knowledge loss in organisational change. This thesis investigates post-campaign knowledge loss, employing a longitudinal process-tracing methodology and leveraging the author’s military insider status. Document analysis, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews with serving military personnel provide empirical data, adding to studies on organisational knowledge loss in non-military sectors. The two case studies focus on post- campaign institutionalisation efforts following the British Army’s deployments in Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. By integrating insights from military innovation studies and organisational theory, myriad factors contributing to knowledge loss are identified. These include personnel turnover, institutional reprioritisations in response to emerging threats (as articulated through leaders’ “theories of victory”), and data management challenges. Equally, by deconstructing relearning, this thesis identifies that there is limited transferability of lessons learned from one campaign to another based on the unique conditions of each, linked to Clausewitz’s notion of the changing character of war. Consequently, the Army’s own learning evaluations tend to focus on the extent to which long-standing, generic doctrinal principles have been employed or relearnt. While experts have argued that some relearning is inevitable in counterinsurgency, this thesis offers fresh perspectives on the reasons for this trend. Furthermore, promising avenues for future research are identified, particularly the potential role of artificial intelligence in reducing relearning by facilitating improved socialisation of routines and enhancing data accessibility.<p></p>

Author dc:creator

• John Bailey (21037820)

• Organisational Learning
• Counterinsurgency
• Artificial Intelligence
• British Army
• Unlearning
• Knowledge Institutionalisation

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved
• Open Access after 2027-10-27

Identifier

10779/exe.32415204.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/32415204